4 ms·

hi, i can chime in and say this is a known fact. M1 is not OOTB IBM PC compatible (unlike almost all x86), which means no standard BIOS/UEFI firmware interface

by cartor 5y ago

hi, i can chime in and say this is a known fact. M1 is not OOTB IBM PC compatible (unlike almost all x86), which means no standard BIOS/UEFI firmware interface for bootloaders like grub etc. internally, there was some significant overhauls to the automated testing and silicon validation/quality control processes during development (well before pandemic) which resulted in a need for this. apple can validate their silicon, but foundries, factories and other third parties are typically not able to (without added cost, implementation, Apple intellectual property, etc), so developing this was cost beneficiary to apple and eases production, and is really just accordance with existing industry standards for CPU manufacturing. i am just surprised this was made public, the motive i do not know, but i hope this helps explain, it's my first comment on this site.

dagmx 5y ago
Asahi Linux isn't an Apple produced product. It's a third party reverse engineered product
- cartor 5y ago
  correct, i forgot some context about what i meant "apple developing", apple allowed raw images to be used now, this is what i described being used in the cpu manufacturing process for testing units. this was not always an option. i meant this pseudo-feature being made public, not asahi which has been public and apple has been aware of for over a year see here: [1]: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/m1n1/commit/0d4fb00ceb8a14f08339c443458c5f6b7adb5a23 https://github.com/AsahiLinux/m1n1/commit/0d4fb00ceb8a14f083... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29591578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29591578
  - marcan_42 5y ago
    The raw image support has nothing to do with silicon bring-up. That is an option for a userspace tool running in macOS recovery mode. At that point you're well past silicon bring-up. I don't know why people keep conflating those two things... it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Silicon bring-up would happen via iBoot on completely unlocked chips (no secureboot fuses). The raw image mode was added for us. Apple has absolutely zero use for such an option.
    - my123 5y ago
      Internally, Apple uses a totally different mechanism to boot Linux, with the silicon validation firmware stack (that runs OpenFirmware of all things) chainloaded from iBoot.

by cartor 5y ago

dagmx 5y ago

Asahi Linux isn't an Apple produced product. It's a third party reverse engineered product

cartor 5y ago
correct, i forgot some context about what i meant "apple developing", apple allowed raw images to be used now, this is what i described being used in the cpu manufacturing process for testing units. this was not always an option. i meant this pseudo-feature being made public, not asahi which has been public and apple has been aware of for over a year see here: [1]: https://github.com/AsahiLinux/m1n1/commit/0d4fb00ceb8a14f08339c443458c5f6b7adb5a23 https://github.com/AsahiLinux/m1n1/commit/0d4fb00ceb8a14f083... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29591578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29591578
- marcan_42 5y ago
  The raw image support has nothing to do with silicon bring-up. That is an option for a userspace tool running in macOS recovery mode. At that point you're well past silicon bring-up. I don't know why people keep conflating those two things... it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Silicon bring-up would happen via iBoot on completely unlocked chips (no secureboot fuses). The raw image mode was added for us. Apple has absolutely zero use for such an option.
  - my123 5y ago
    Internally, Apple uses a totally different mechanism to boot Linux, with the silicon validation firmware stack (that runs OpenFirmware of all things) chainloaded from iBoot.